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The Internet Communications Politics

Pepe the Frog Is Dead (theguardian.com) 358

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The creator of Pepe the Frog has symbolically killed off the cartoon frog, effectively surrendering control of the character to the far right. Matt Furie, an artist and children's book author, created the now-infamous frog as part of his "Boy's Club" series on MySpace in 2005. Pepe took on a life of its own online as a meme, before being eventually adopted as a symbol by the "alt-right" in the lead-up to last year's U.S. election. In September, Hillary Clinton identified Pepe the Frog as a racist hate symbol, and Pepe was added to the Anti-Defamation League's database of hate symbols. Furie launched a campaign to "Save Pepe," flooding the internet with "peaceful or nice" depictions of the character in a bid to shake its association with white supremacy and antisemitism. But he now seems to have conceded defeat, killing the character off in a one-page strip for the independent publisher Fantagraphics' Free Comic Book Day. It showed Pepe laid to rest in an open casket, being mourned by his fellow characters from Boy's Club.
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Pepe the Frog Is Dead

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  • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Monday May 08, 2017 @04:32PM (#54380223) Journal

    Drawing more attention to a meme isn't really the best way to kill it off. Now it's all Jesus-motif Pepes.

    It's not easy being green.

    • by penandpaper ( 2463226 ) on Monday May 08, 2017 @04:45PM (#54380317) Journal

      If only there were a celebrity example of trying to suppress information online which in effect draws more attention to said information. That way we could give it a clever name as a warning to other... Oh, wait. [wikipedia.org]

      Pepe died for your memes to be dank.

      • by Mashiki ( 184564 ) <mashiki.gmail@com> on Monday May 08, 2017 @05:58PM (#54380955) Homepage

        The only people that want pepe dead are those on the left who continue to push that a meme from 2008 [knowyourmeme.com] is a "hate symbol." [dailycaller.com] FYI that's fake news. And said bullshit of it being a hate symbol was nothing but a troll by an individual to screw with the absolute lack of fact checking by the media. It's no different then people trolling the media that the following things are also hate symbols: OK gesture. [knowyourmeme.com] White milk. [inquisitr.com] The entire American Sign Language, among other things [heatst.com]. If anything people have simply had enough and decided to crash the media with no survivors. I wish them the best, and may kek be with them.

        • may kek be with you and your memes be dank.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday May 09, 2017 @03:16AM (#54382805) Homepage Journal

          Pepe is considered a hate symbol because if you go over to 4chan's /pol board right this very moment you will find a huge number anti-Semitic, racist and and hate-mongering memes featuring him. 4chan users use Pepe as an image macro, a short-hand for far right political views that are mainly defined by a hatred of almost anyone non-white. In fact, a common question on /pol, so common in fact that the pinned first post warns about asking it, is if a certain group is "white", since all non-whites are degenerate in their eyes.

          Don't take my word for it, go to 4chan's /pol right now and check for yourself. NSFW, obviously.

          • No matter how many times you say things, it doesnt make it true just because you've said them.

            I'm not even going to begin to point out the errors this time, but I have a history of trivially pointing out your lack of both knowledge and logic... by simply quoting you. Think about that for awhile.
          • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

            That part where you don't even understand the basics of chan culture. I'm not sure what's funnier, that you continue to parrot bullshit over and over and over again. Or that you seem to believe it. Whether it's "gamergate is full of misogynist neckbeards" supporting Sarkeesian the idiot that believes demurely dressed Elizabeth Comstock is "sexualized" [i.redd.it] or the "pepe is a hate symbol." Thanks for explaining and showing everyone what a normie is though.

            Gonna be a real blow when you find out that those "whi

            • by Mashiki ( 184564 )

              Or one of those multiple big name anti-gamergate people have been arrested, ... [ageofshitlords.com]

              Because when you reread something twice and edit something to break a link.

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Mashiki, your rant doesn't actually address the point that by simply examining /pol at any given time you can find all the evidence you need to understand why this conclusion was reached.

              By the way, still not going to enter a moderated, public debate with me? You pick the topic.

              • Um, it really can be explained by "reaction pics". Pepe is a template for reaction and memes.

                An eagle is not racist for being a part of nazi imagery. Intent and Context matter.

                • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                  by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                  In a practical sense, if someone posts a Pepe meme along with "I hate Jews", what is the actual difference if they are doing it because they really hate Jews or because they just want to annoy people?

                  Okay, the person posting it is a different kind of fuckwad in either case, but the message is the same, the effect on Jews is the same, and the actual racists reposting that stuff on Facebook don't care...

          • you do understand they are doing it specifically because it gets a rise out of people, not because they are actually racists right?

            I expect better from slashdot readers
        • . . . . Pepe arose from the dead. Although he **IS** fighting it out with Jesusraptor. Geeze, people, it's MEMES and 4CHAN. . .

    • So Matt Furie demolishes his own house because the media wouldn't stop bugging him about how Twitter nazis were building similar looking houses and throwing wild parties in them. Despite the ADL explicitly stating that "the majority of uses of Pepe the Frog have been, and continue to be, non-bigoted", pro-Clinton journalists continued in their all-out effort to remove this thorn from Clinton's side. Their tactic, as usual, was to divide an unwelcome movement by shaming those susceptible to the fallacy of gu

  • Sad... (Score:4, Funny)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Monday May 08, 2017 @04:35PM (#54380247)
    Who else will Ms. Piggy cheat with to make Kermit the Frog jealous?
  • by king neckbeard ( 1801738 ) on Monday May 08, 2017 @04:40PM (#54380285)
    Feels Bad Man.
  • by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Monday May 08, 2017 @04:44PM (#54380307)
    You can't kill a cartoon character. You can drop an anvil on his head. You can slingshot him into a mountain. You can blow him up with TNT. All these things (and more) happen to a particular coyote, and yet every week, he still comes back. Maybe limping and wrapped in bandages, or blackened from the explosion, but alive nonetheless.
    • by TWX ( 665546 )

      Well, there was that one time [imdb.com]...

    • You can't kill a cartoon character. You can drop an anvil on his head. You can slingshot him into a mountain. You can blow him up with TNT. All these things (and more) happen to a particular coyote, and yet every week, he still comes back. Maybe limping and wrapped in bandages, or blackened from the explosion, but alive nonetheless.

      Everyone in Toon Town knows how to kill a cartoon character - a solution of turpentine, acetone, and benzene.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's symbolic. The creator was reacting to both Macron's victory in France, which many on the far right seem to consider a huge loss. They thought that with Brexit and Trump they might be winning, but there has been a wave of rejection of populist and far right politics in Europe lately, which naturally they predict will result in the continent becoming an Islamic 3rd world country within a decade...

      More over, the creator of Pepe is saying he is giving up on the character. He can't be redeemed or recover fr

  • by Snufu ( 1049644 ) on Monday May 08, 2017 @04:44PM (#54380309)

    Dibs on the legs.

  • Boy's Club? Membership of one?

  • fake news (Score:4, Informative)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Monday May 08, 2017 @05:02PM (#54380485)
  • Not all share in Furie's delusion.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The creator of Pepe the Frog has symbolically killed off the cartoon frog, effectively surrendering control of the character to the far right.

    Err, no, that's not how copyright works.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by coolmoe2 ( 3414211 )
      This is not about his claim to copyright it's about his desire to not be the creator of the next swastika.
    • by nasch ( 598556 )

      Perhaps he meant cultural control, not legal control. After all copyright rarely interferes with things spreading organically regardless of the copyright holder's wishes.

  • Long live Pepe the Frog!

  • They cooked him in a butter, wine and garlic sauce and had him for dinner over the weekend.

    • Hehe they sure did! Shame what happened to Pepe the comic character, but it looks like the alt-right is cooked!

  • I say we fork Pepe (or at least his legs).

    I will show myself out.
  • Archer's spy organization couldn't be ISIS after Daesh took that name. 4chan did to Pepe what they did to Rage Guy and now that's dead, too. It's crystal clear 4chan's the real enemy.

  • You're making this way too easy for us. I posted an infographic labelled "White Supremacist Hand Symbols" that I found on 4chan on a troll meme page I run, it got shitloads of shares on various liberal pages. What they didn't seem to realise was that it was the American sign language alphabet. You'd think after having multiple such instances of this kind of ridicule (particularly the whole "white power" ok symbol), people would stop being so deranged. But sites like the Guardian all double down on their stu
  • Careful (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You should not automatically categorize people as "anti-semitic", "homophobic", "racist", "white nationalist", etc just because they oppose your political aims. You caused a cascade of events when you kept up that behavior.

    Take for example all the factory workers who have lost their jobs since globalization began. They, according to Warren Buffet, are "road kill". When they protest, you do what? Call them all of the above.

    There are far more categories of people than just those. You need to stop.

  • Sure, he may have given a reason for ceasing use of the frog artwork HIMSELF.

    But the meme jihadis are going to continue using it regardless.

    Hell, now that the creator's effectively renounced it, they may even use it MORE. For the lulz.

    Sit back and actually THINK about this for a sec.

    We've reached a point that, by effectively TOUCHING something, we create a situation where a content creator considers it "destroyed" and relinquishes ownership.

    Do you realize what kind of power that imbues on people?

    If you wan

  • Every time somebody raises concerns about the current trends towards hate, distrust, racism and shameless, outright lying, it seems a group of howler monkeys start up, trying to drown out any comment they don't like, using any means they have at hand. I suppose we should all be grateful they generally aren't all that intellectually well-endowed, and that most of it is just meaningless nonsense. It used to upset me, because I genuinely like to have an honest discussion about things and try to cultivate an at

  • Just to summarize...
    There is a story, that has made "the news", where a cartoon frog has been "killed off". This frog was an obscure image that was picked up by people on the internet as a way to make on line jokes. It was one of many many images used for this purpose. As making and sharing these memes became more popular, it was used more and more to incite a reaction in other people. This actually found its way into the presidential election process. Now people are sitting around on a message board d

A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is never sure. Proverb

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